Tagged: Game Engine

As I’ve wrote before, Torque 3D was released as open source under the MIT license – however fully porting it to GNU/Linux takes time and money. For this purpose the creators of the engine – GarageGames started an IndieGoGo campaign. The goal is to FULLY port Torque3D to GNU/Linux (including the editor !) For this GarageGames intends to hire a community member full time to work on the project We have $29,487 to raise in 45 days.

Sadly I’ve seen many campaign that want to bring something for free for the whole community (instead of just for those who pledge) – fail, even trough the purpose is far greater. Please help bring Torque 3D to GNU/Linux and make it available for all. This will bring us a great and professional engine to use in our projects.

Right now, Linux has some great programming libraries for developing games, but when it comes to working as a level designer or an artist, the tools are lagging behind Windows and Mac OS X. It’s not from lack of trying. There are great developers working on tools day and night for Linux, but the going is slow. Unity announced an export option for their engine so that game developers on Mac and Windows can export to Linux. This is EXCELLENT news for Linux game players. It’s the same news as always for Linux game developers: to make games: buy a Mac or pay for Windows if you want to make games.

We started this campaign to change that message. We want Linux to be a first-class citizen for game developers. We recently open sourced Torque 3D under the MIT license, and the first deluge of questions were about Linux compatibility. The move to open source Torque was something that the founders of GarageGames wanted to do over 10 years ago, but they also needed a business model for their studio.

Torque is the engine that was originally used in the Tribes series of games, and has seen a number of advancements throughout its history. Since open sourcing it, we have had nearly 300 forks of the codebase on GitHub. You can find out more information about Torque at the GarageGames site and download it from GitHub to kick the tires. Unfortunately, it’s only for Windows right now, so you might have to flex your Wine or dual-booting muscles to try it out.

What’s In It for All of Us?

We want a dedicated Linux-native game development platform. We don’t think that Linux game developers should have to switch between machines so that they can develop on Windows and just test on Linux. We don’t think that they should have to fiddle with Wine to get the simplest of editors to work natively, only to have the whole thing crash when importing models. We want Linux to be a native platform for game developers.

Workflow for Engines without Native Support

If you use any of the popular engines out there that have Linux support, here is a workflow (assuming dual-booting).Open editor. Import models, edit level, add logic, etc. Build the game. Export to Linux. Copy the binary to a shared drive. Reboot and load Linux. Copy from the shared drive locally. Run the game. Crash. Get crash report. Copy crash report to shared drive. Reboot. Load engine and crash report. Find mistake and attempt to repair. Repeat.

This loop is a little faster if you have two computers next to each other and a shared device, but even then you’re switching gears and doing a lot of waiting. Waiting means that you have time to get coffee or check Slashdot for news, but it’s also time that you could be making your game.

Our Solution: Linux-Native Game Development

Obvious, right? Well, it should be. But it’s also an answer that takes a lot of time and money to implement. When commercial software companies look at their bottom line, the return on investment for developing software for Linux is really low (and often unknown) in the game engine development world. John Carmack noted during his keynote at QuakeCon that “Valve announcing Steam Linux support changes things a bit but we have made two forays into Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client but that platform just hasn’t carried its weight compared to Mac” (45:26, QuakeCon 2012 – John Carmack Keynote). This was specifically about game targets, but the lack of commercial editor support for game development on Linux speaks volumes on how the engine industry feels about Linux.

Luckily, our platform layer has some of the core functionality needed for a Linux port. Our dedicated server has been used on Linux for a number of years with different games, and that handles much of the core engine functionality. What currently is not working on Linux is the game editor and shared client. That’s where you come in.

So, How Will the Money be Used?

Well, this is an experiment to see if crowd funding can pay for specific features that people really want in a game engine.What we are asking for is enough money, based on a number of estimates from strong Linux developers who have ported large codebases in the past, to make this port happen. The estimates were between two and three months for a single, dedicated developer. We chose three months to accommodate any found-work that can come up. As software developers, we know that once you start down a path, new work will be discovered, so we wanted to make sure to include a buffer for it.

The project will pay $45 an hour for roughly 3 months worth of work from a single developer (a team can be hired to increase productivity, but there will be a finite amount of money from the campaign to pay them). Of course, IndieGoGo will get 4% off the top for hosting the service. The payment providers (credit cards, PayPal, etc) will get roughly 3-4% depending on international fees, etc. Then, the prize tiers will be fulfilled, shirts and such bought and shipped! The remainder of the money will go towards the development team porting Torque 3D to Linux.

When Will We See Updates?

As it is developed. That’s right. Torque 3D is open source and up on Github right now. You can download it and take it to town, kick the tires, and see what it’s all about. There will also be a Linux branch live on GitHub where you can watch the developers porting the engine to Linux. You get to see the benefits immediately. You do not have to wait a long time watching for infrequent updates, hoping to see something in a year or two. You will have full access to the development branch of the Linux port to see the team’s progress, commit by commit.

But even if we do not reach our goal, and your money goes right back in your pockets, we think you’ll see a Linux port eventually. It just won’t be nearly as quick since the developers have jobs, families, bills, and they’re doing the port of a very large engine in their limited free time. Why not hire them so that the port can be their full-time job? That’s what we want to do.

Our first platform target is 32b Ubuntu, with stretch goals for other platforms to be announced.

I love Linux, but have no money! How can I help?

Tell people. Tell your friends and family, local installfests, anyone who would love to make games on Linux.

Share this project using the IndieGoGo social tools, your favorite social media platforms, or just by linking to it on forums that you frequent!

Leave comments so that we can answer your questions.

About Torque

Torque 3D is based on the 2007 Frontline award winning Torque Game Engine Advanced. It has been actively developed for over ten years, beginning its life at Dynamix for the Starseige Tribes games. After the closure of Dynamix by Sierra On-Line, some of the studio formed GarageGames with the vision of changing the way games are made and played.

About GarageGames

GarageGames is a 3D visualization middleware company dedicated to creating top-tier technology for the game and simulation industries. GarageGames has over seventy years of combined experience and a successful engine platform for the last 10 years.

several days ago LGN had a Trivia contest asking “What game engine is being used in the largest number of GNU/Linux games ?”
I frankly thought that this would be an easy one, but only after several days and two big tips someone managed to guess the engine I thought about.
Many readers said id tech engines as the most popular answer but some people got more creative with PyGame, nethack, OpenBor and Eamon Adventure System. (some of which aren’t really game engines).
The trivia answers were interesting to read..someone even suggest Unigine (I wish) and SDL (it’s a library, not a game engine).

My answer was the visual novel game engine Ren’Py which has over 240 GNU/Linux games and growing.
I thought that LGN readers should have known it because I post a LOT about visual novels and all of them use the Ren’Py engine.

So the current winner is failsaurus BUT as I’ve said before nothing is set in stone and you can still prove me wrong.

Just some notes about what I call games…
Games should be stand alone and executable and not relay on some engine or a program (apart of the OS) to be installed on the users system.
For example MAME is NOT a game engine but an Emulator, it’s ability to run games of different systems still doesn’t make it a game engine as you can’t develop with it.
PyGame is “a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language.” , but I doubt that it counts as a game engine on itself.

If you think that I’m wrong, please discuss here at the comments.

If until Friday the 7/10/2011 my answer won’t be disapproved then I’ll grant the winner failsaurus the key for Achron.

PixelLight is a free source, cross platform 3D engine and framework released under LGPL3 and GPL3 licenses.

About
PixelLight is a cross-platform application framework for any kind of 3D applications like games, interactive simulations or visualizations. It’s based on a highly flexible scene graph system that allows you to compose and visualize any type of 3D scene for your application.
PixelLight is written in C++ and has been designed with flexibility and extensibility as one of it’s main goals. Therefore, it’s not only a 3D engine, but a consistent framework that allows you to combine all the components that you need for your application without having to care about the differences of the actual libraries, APIs or operating systems that you are using. The underlying systems and libraries are abstracted by a powerful reflection and component system, which makes it easier and more effective to create applications for different platforms and target components such as rendering, sound, physics, network, scripting and so on.

A few months ago I’ve postedthatKoonsolo the developers of Mystic Mine are working on a new 2d game engine.
Now a website about their upcoming “Koonsolo RPG Editor” is up and running.
Their game engine will enable non programmers/artists to create their own 2D Flash based games with ease !More info and demonstrations will be updated on their official website

Create your own online RPG, it’s easy!

No programming or art skills required:
1. Design your game with our editor
2. Press play
3. Play the generated Flash game in your browser

It’s easy!
Open the Koonsolo Game Editor and start creating your game right away. No need to know how to program or how to create graphics, sounds or music. We provide everything. All you have to do is design your game, press play, and see your game in action.

It’s fast!
There is no faster way to create an online RPG than with the Koonsolo RPG Editor. All technical and artistic details are already handled by us. You can get a working game in less than 5 minutes!

It’s powerful!
For artists or programmers, we offer total control over graphics, sound effects, music and game code. All source code of the game engine is available to you, so you can adapt or extend any functionality you want. The graphics, sounds and music can be customized as you wish.

It’s fun!
Creating games is fun, and it’s even more fun when you don’t need to handle the boring but necessary tasks. We make sure you can enjoy the fun parts of creating your own games, and we will handle the tedious tasks that come along with it.

Why use Koonsolo RPG Editor ?

Design the game and don’t worry about the technical details

Save time

Use professional graphics, sound and music

Use a professional game engine

Total control over the game engine because it’s open source

Possible to use your own graphics, sound or music

Features

Easy to use map editor

Adapt the game screen size

Import RPG Maker resources (Tilesets, sprites, …)

Creates Flash SWF files that you can upload to any flash portal such as Kongregate or Newgrounds